Batman: The Killing Joke
2016 · Directed by Sam Liu
Original language: English
- animation
- crime
- drama
- action
- thriller
The story
As Batman hunts for the escaped Joker, the Clown Prince of Crime attacks the Gordon family to prove a diabolical point mirroring his own fall into madness.
What it’s like
Hand-drawn animation with inky, heavy outlines, flat saturated colour and rain-slicked Gotham rendered in cold blues and sickly greens, the palette sliding toward garish carnival pinks and yellows whenever the Joker enters. Its present-day sequences are tight and noirish, all shadow and wet asphalt, while the flashback to the Joker's origin is drawn in a warmer, more faded register that makes the memories feel like someone else's. Sound leans on a brooding orchestral score that stings sharply during violence, with Mark Hamill's gleeful, unhinged Joker and Kevin Conroy's weary Batman carrying most of the emotional weight. The vibe is bleak, cynical and feverish, the sort of unease that settles in late at night rather than something to put on for comfort. Pacing is brisk in the chase and slower, almost stagey, in the dialogue-heavy scenes between the two men, a long-tangled rivalry where neither is ever quite free of the other. Intensity is high: a graphic shooting and assault, a brutal, sexually suggestive attack on a character, disturbing torture-adjacent cruelty and a long grim interrogation, with dread and psychological menace more than gore. Not gentle. For adult viewers who want a dark, mature take on crime and madness, and who can handle sustained cruelty in a stylised cartoon world.
More films like Batman: The Killing Joke
Closest in mood, pacing and theme. Tell us why you loved Batman: The Killing Jokeand we’ll explain which ones fit you.
